


And Sharp, With Many Teeth

by Cirth



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22254493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cirth/pseuds/Cirth
Summary: "I think," Dick says, in a halting tone, like he is trying not to step on Jason's toes, "you should stay in my safehouse for a while."
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 21
Kudos: 231





	And Sharp, With Many Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> You can read this as slash or gen. Happens after the Colour of the Water but can be read as a standalone fic.
> 
> https://lilaclotuses.tumblr.com/

"Need something to bite down on?"

Jason sucks his teeth. He wants to say that he doesn't require babying, and Dick's already given him a generous dose of codeine. Unfortunately, that won't prevent the pain of resetting a bone.

Dick looks at him dubiously, and then fishes into his utility belt to retrieve a thick handkerchief. Jason wants to laugh, but his ribs are cracked. Trust Dick to keep a regular plaid hanky on him along with his smoke bombs and explosives; he's got a level of paranoia that rivals Jason's own.

(And they both know where they got _that_ little personality trait from.)

Dick rolls the handkerchief into a tight wad and hands it to Jason, who stuffs it into his mouth and gives a thumbs-up sign with a confidence he does not feel.

"On three," Dick says.

Jason is immediately suspicious, because Dick doesn't count down for shit like this, he just – 

"One." Dick resets Jason's left tibia with a brutally precise motion.

Jason will deny the howl he emits for the rest of his days. "You _fucker_ ," he says hoarsely, eyes watering, after he pries out the spit-sodden handkerchief; he blinks rapidly so he won't humiliate himself further. His chest and leg are on fire.

"Happy to help," says Dick dryly. He's smiling, the bastard. "Now let's take care of those ribs."

Jason sits gingerly on the couch, grimacing, as Dick applies a cream and wraps his torso, careful not to tie it too tightly. While he works, Jason eyes the dirt-flecked window, trying to distract himself from the burn. Outside, Blüdhaven's skyline ripples with heat and pollution. Working a case in this city had clearly been one of his less-than-stellar decisions.

"Any idea who did it?" Dick says, in a carefully off-hand manner that suggests he is more interested than he ought to be. Jason almost wishes Dick weren't so protective of his family – especially family that insisted they _weren't_ family.

"Jay?"

Jason grunts. His life is not the Bats' business, and he does not want to drag Dick into this debacle, sordid as it is. It is irrational, because he knows Dick isn't unfamiliar with the kind of cases Jason deals with, but something about Dick has always seemed too wholesome, too _clean_ , for Jason to allow him near his usual work. "Someone I pissed off in the past, I'm guessing."

Dick makes a funny little _tsch_ sound; he's clearly been spending too much time around the demon spawn. "That doesn't narrow it down any."

"You missed your calling in life as a clown."

Despite the banter, Jason is disquieted. He is not an easy man to take by surprise. He tracks every living person he's fucked over. His hideouts are booby trapped to hell and back. He doesn't keep the same cell phone or number for more than three months.

Still nothing had prepared him for the explosion that had blasted his safehouse to kingdom come and nearly taken Jason with it – he'd only just managed to dive through the third-storey window and crash into in a dumpster below, stunned. As he lay sprawled, the breath punched from his lungs, his brain processed two things: a) whoever was targeting him was unbelievably good, and b) he needed to get out of there pronto, before his attacker found him.

He found himself comming Dick on a private channel before he could reason himself out of it. Several months ago, Dick had given him his number again, as a kind of peace offering, and it didn't feel like he was being welcomed into the family, but it felt like he was being welcomed into Dick's life.

Jason hadn't intended to use it, but he trusts Dick more than he likes to let on. They have a history, more than Jason has with any of the other kids – when Jason first donned the pixie boots, Dick had been more accommodating than most people in his position would have been. It's easier to appreciate when you've also been a dumb teenager and burned from replacement.

Jason didn't use Dick's number per se, but it was the thought that counted.

Now he's paying for it with Dick's sass.

"I think," Dick says, in a halting tone, like he is trying not to step on Jason's toes, "you should stay in my safehouse for a while. I can be in and out of here till you're recovered."

Jason snorts. "And have you guys track my every move, including my internet search history?"

Dick looks wounded. "On my part, I won't. Please. If the attacker knew where this safehouse of yours was, they probably know where your other ones are too, in Gotham. They've likely been spying on you for a while."

Goddammit, but he's right. Jason does not often accept help from Bruce or his brood; they're a twisted bunch who think that stalking your family for their well-being is normal. But Dick has already hauled Jason's ass away from imminent death today, and Jason has nowhere else to go.

Dick is pinning him with an expression that somehow manages to be both neutral and pleading.

Jason groans. "Fine. But I've got dibs on Netflix."

There is a silence. Dick tilts his head to one side and scrunches his nose. "Netflix is a...cafe?"

Jason looks at the ceiling. "I wish there'd been someone else I could have called in this hell-city," he says. 

***

Watching a movie with Dick, Jason finds out, is pointless.

Dick doesn't actually look at the TV, instead typing away on his laptop, working on a kidnapping case he's been on for the past fortnight. There's an abandoned can of Sprite sitting on the coffee table, along with a half-eaten box of thin-crust pepperoni pizza. ("I wish they had a cornflake option," Dick had said glumly, to Jason's horror. He wondered if Dick was just screwing with him; there might have been the ghost of a smirk on Dick's lips.)

Jason's own box is wiped clean – he hates wasting food, and always eats what he gets, unless they're Alfred's waffles, which are a crime against humanity. "Are you gonna finish that?" he says, pointing to the mangled remains of Dick's dinner. The last time he ate was yesterday and he's still hungry.

Dick grunts.

"Can I have your Sprite too?"

Another grunt.

"I'm going to walk naked into Gotham Cathedral on Friday and steal one of the stained-glass windows."

Dick murmurs, "That's fantastic," without looking up from his laptop.

Jason huffs out a laugh and winces when that hurts his ribs. "Hopeless case," he says, gingerly shuffling over to reach for Dick's pizza without causing himself debilitating pain.

His phone buzzes from where it is lying on the sofa by the armrest. 

Jason goes still, his hand halfway to the box.

No one has his number, not even the joes he hires for temp jobs. The Bats could hack it with enough effort, but he hasn't given it to them. Even Dick is out of the loop.

Jason picks up his phone, the prickly heat of anxiety crawling beneath his skin. There's a text message from a number he doesn't recognise.

 _For that head in your duffel bag_.

There is a thin, high whistle in his ears. All other sounds are drowned out. Swallowing, he hits dial, but it's dead. Burner phone. The SIM card has probably already been broken and discarded.

"Jay?" says Dick, picking up on the tension, turning to him with his brow furrowed. "You all right?"

Jason would rather be alone for this kind of fallout. He doesn't need anyone peering over his shoulder to see his past actions blow up in his face and tell him, _I told you so_.

"It's from the attacker, isn't it," says Dick, narrowing his eyes, with that ludicrous capacity of his to read people, and closing his laptop with a firm _snick_. Jason inwardly curses him. "They revealed something about who they are."

Jason pushes his phone into his pocket – not that he expects Dick to dive for it, but he has always been protective of his privacy. He considers saying, _It doesn't concern you_ , but that will only make Dick push harder, so he settles for, "I'd rather deal with this on my own."

He realises his error when Dick levels him with a hurt, earnest look. "Let me help, Jay. I'm sure two heads will be better than one in solving this case. Keeping it to yourself is counterproductive."

"One, I don't need your help to solve this case. Two, you should take your own damn advice."

"That's low."

"It's true."

Dick sighs, scrubs a hand over his face. "You're difficult to outsmart, and yet this person nearly killed you." He turns to Jason, expression changing like a light switch from weary to fierce. The intensity feels like it could burn a hole through Jason's face. "That scares me. I don't want to wake up and read the morning paper to find out that my brother – and now my friend – has been killed again."

It plows into Jason with the force of a freight train, the concern, the candidness of it all. It makes him jittery and confused, and angry because he is jittery and confused. He wants to snap, _It's not about you_ , but he knows that's not what Dick means.

"You'll only give me a hard time if I tell you," sighs Jason. He is not prepared to lose Dick's friendship when it has barely started, coltish and fragile as it is. He is not prepared for the pity and patronisation in Dick's eyes.

Dick shuffles closer and, without a warning, puts an arm around Jason's shoulders. Jason doesn't quite jump, but he comes near it.

The last time Dick was this chummy was when Jason was still Robin, though Jason himself has made awkward attempts at manly half-hugs with Dick over the years. What does it say about himself that, even now, beneath the throbbing disquietude, he is childishly gleeful that Dick is warming towards him? "I promise you," Dick says, putting his free hand on Jason's forearm, "I won't."

Jason drops his head back, takes a breath.

He tells him. It's as though his brain has turned to jelly but his mouth keeps flapping. Dick doesn't pull away through any of it. Jason doesn't look at him.

When he finishes, Dick's eyelids shutter, as though his brain is processing information not meant to fit in it. Jason waits for the meltdown, waits for Dick to leap up and say, _This is why you shouldn't have done it,_ or worse, _Let us help you_. But then Dick leans back, and his face twists as though in grief. Already Jason is stung with guilt.

Dick says, in a thick voice, "We'll find whoever it is. You'll be fine." He looks at Jason. "We'll be fine," he adds with a small, firm nod.

Jason thinks Dick's optimism is overblown, but it is useless to argue now. He says, "Then let's get started."

***

He doesn't trash the safehouse for two reasons.

  1. It is not his space.
  2. He hates people who break things when they're angry; Willis Todd used up Jason's lifetime quota. 



So he stamps down on the urge.

The computer and the pin board with all its papers and red strings – the fruit of five days' labour – stare at him, damning in their sterility, their matter-of-factness, like a doctor saying, You have six months to live, I'm sorry, you can pay at the reception.

They'd hunted down every shred of information they could about the eight men Jason had beheaded way back when, as well as their families, sifted through it till they zeroed in on a probable suspect.

Jason wants to shove the barrel of his gun in his own mouth.

Piper Jenkins. Twenty-three, runs a fast-growing drug trafficking ring. Never went to college. Three sisters, one brother, all younger. Her mother, a former housewife, turned to prostitution to support the family after Jason offed her father, Robert Jenkins.

Jason is unused to feeling remorse. Guilt, sometimes, for attacking his family, especially the kids, but not remorse. Now, it rips through him. He cannot even consider how Bruce would respond, what tired lecture his eyes would give; this is too big, too painful, a nail through the palm of his hand.

He can't blame Piper for going at him, because he would have done the same thing.

Dick is seated beside him, silent, hunched over with his fingers steepled over his mouth, expression calculating and sombre. Jason suspects Dick wants to electrocute him with his escrima sticks. He wouldn't even dodge.

He gets up, reaches for the crutches that Dick had fished out of his apartment for him.

"Where are you going?" Dick asks sharply.

"I'll send the crutches back when I'm healed." He can catch a bus to Gotham; Blüdhaven isn't his usual base anyway.

"What? Fuck, Jason." Dick leaps up and grabs Jason's wrist. "You're not leaving."

Jason wrenches his arm away, and regrets it when his ribs protest vehemently. "Shut up, Dick. I know you're thinking that I had it coming."

Dick's cheeks go red, and Jason can't even feel the thrill of getting a rise out of him. "Do you ever listen to yourself? You're not the only one who's messed up before."

"Blockbuster was different," Jason hisses. "You just stood aside and let someone else shoot the guy, because you didn't see a way out."

Dick grips Jason by the lapels of his jacket and gets up in his face, and the unexpected proximity is so uncomfortable that the words die in Jason's throat. Jason isn't used to being pushed around; he is not small, has not been for years, but now he feels it, beneath Dick's overwhelming presence and the disorienting wave of his own emotions.

"A traffic jam that I caused killed his mother; her heart failed. He murdered over fifty people in return," Dick spits. He lets go, steps back, but Jason still can't breathe. "We may have ruined as many lives as we saved. There's no way of knowing." There is a muted desolation now in Dick's eyes, and he turns away. "That's how it is."

The anger drains out of Jason and he is left with exhaustion and a dull, pervasive regret. He wants to mourn, wants to take days for it, but does not feel like he has a right. Dick may be correct, but there is small comfort in his words.

Jason thinks of the boy who pried needles out of his mother's white hands and cleared up the vomit. Who couldn't pay for a funeral with the money he got from stealing tyres off fancy cars. Would that boy would have needed someone like Red Hood, or would Red Hood's help backfire, just like Batman's?

He sits back down on the sofa, wincing when the movement jars his injuries. His surroundings seem insubstantial, like he could pass his fingers through them. "I need to go after her," he finds himself saying. Then, with more conviction: "I need to fix this."

Dick stares, disbelieving. "What, now?"

"Not now, idiot, I have to heal. But she's still dangerous, and if she keeps finding stuff out about me? Soon enough she's going to latch on to the rest of you." It wouldn't be hard. The Red Hood has been seen with the Bats before. He's pretty sure a lot of criminals consider him a Bat already.

"I can do it for you," Dick says, leaning forward, with a heated intensity that sets alarm bells ringing in Jason's head and gives him visions of Dick's body wrapped up in a gunny sack and dumped into Gotham harbour. "She might become more aggressive if you fight her."

"I can do aggressive," says Jason, unable to keep a thread of bitterness from his voice. "It's not exactly alien to me."

Dick gives him an unimpressed look. "It's not alien to any of us."

Jason stares, then gives a scratchy, rueful chuckle. He forgets, sometimes, that to the villains who have been around long enough, Robin numero uno was a monstrous little freak who laughed as he kicked grown men in the kidney hard enough to make them piss blood. It had taken a few years, mainly because of the ridiculous outfit, but eventually rumours that Batman couldn't actually control his brightly clad shadow seeped into the underworld and lurked there.

When Jason had been handed the mantle, some thugs expressed surprise that he did not find enjoyment in knocking people's teeth down their throat. Dick had taken his job as Robin with extraordinary seriousness, but he also approached it with a glee that bordered on the manic. It was terrifying to anyone with a lick of sense.

"Fine," he says, to Dick's visible surprise, "you can tag along, circus boy."

Over the next few weeks, they settle into something resembling a routine. Dick goes to work during the day, teaching kiddies how to do flips and handstands and dismount from the high bar without breaking their necks. (It's such a _Dick_ thing to do that it makes Jason roll his eyes.)

Between digging out more information on Piper Jenkins, working on sundry cases, and torturing himself with physiotherapy, the boredom is what gets to Jason. He's never been above indulging in his love for fiction after he's done with his work. Already he's watched two movie adaptations of _Pride and Prejudice_ and sat through the original _Star Trek_ , courtesy Dick's obsession with it.

"No books in here?" he says hopefully to Dick one night, just as Dick is heading out on patrol.

Dick raises an eyebrow, and without a word slips up the stairs to the roof. He prowls back in around seven in the morning and dumps three books onto the bed. Jason rifles through them like a kid with presents on Christmas. "Didn't know you were a Joyce fanboy," he says, flipping through _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_. "Your taste isn't offensive." Dick has always been more inclined towards the hard sciences – he doesn't seem like the sort who'd have the patience for literature.

"I've got the _Jeeves and Wooster_ audiobook too," Dick says, peeling off his mask and scratching his nose. The glue always did itch like hell; Jason remembers nearly crying with frustration at the persistent redness and the pimples. It is amazing how no one came up with a slightly better alternative till around the time Damian squeezed into the Robin boots. "I listen to it when I'm in the shower sometimes."

Jason pauses. "You mean you hear Aunt Dahlia listing all of Bertie's inadequacies while you scrub your junk with soap?" he says, as Dick folds in half, laughing. "Gross."

Dick sits down on the bed, running his long fingers over one of the volumes. His smile is crooked, and Jason can see his dental implants. He feels a bit like a voyeur, which is stupid. (He wonders if he could have seen this Dick Grayson, laid back and open with his eyes cow-soft, if everything hadn't happened the way it did.)

"Pad thai for dinner?" Dick is saying. "I've got the ingredients."

"If there's ice cream I can make us an affogato for dessert too," says Jason. His leg has healed enough that he can stand and work, though it still hurts.

"Knew you were a fancy bastard," Dick returns, with another smile.

He puts on hideous bubblegum-pop music while he cuts up the chicken, and bobs his head to the beat. Jason can tell even from Dick's humming that he's tone deaf, but before he can voice this, Dick hops next to him, shifting his chopping board over as well, so their elbows bump.

Jason stops dicing the vegetables. The appropriate – expected – thing to do would be to step away and demand personal space. Instead, Jason stands there, enjoying the heat of Dick's skin and wishing he didn't. He didn't grow up with affection, and he always secretly wanted to be so comfortable around someone that he didn't _want_ personal space when he was with them.

(Usually, he forces himself to not think about stupid, corny stuff like this – not that his mind often meanders in that direction anyway, with the high-stress cases he takes.)

Dick is still humming, a vapid smile on his face. There's a bit of paper in his hair, probably from the wind while he was out on patrol, and Jason feels something dangerously close to fondness for him.

"Jason?"

"What?"

"Are you gonna get the garlic or...?"

Jason realises he'd been standing there with his knife on his board, staring into space. He grunts an affirmation, and Dick slants him a teasing look, but does not say anything.

***

Jason is not unused to the dreams.

It is the same this night. The Joker. The crowbar. His fifteen-year-old self asking him to help, and he can't, he doesn't, he just stands there – it has already happened, and even in his dreams, he knows this.

What's different is that this time he thinks, for the briefest, maddest second, that he may have deserved it. Stupid. He knows he didn't. He thinks it anyway.

He jolts awake with Dick's hand on his shoulder, as though he'd been shaking him. (Dick had forced him to take the bed from the start, and opted for the couch.)

Dick is looking at him with a carefully blank face. "Wanna talk about it?" he says, after Jason has calmed down. He always offers to talk about other people's problems. Jason isn't used to it, isn't used to slicing himself open for another's gaze, so he shakes his head, sitting up and running a hand through his sweaty hair. "Sorry for waking you," he mutters.

"You didn't." Dick sits down on the bed, and his shoulders seem a bit too relaxed, his posture a bit too casual.

Jason scoffs, still uneasy from the image of the crowbar swinging down and down. "Looks like neither of us is having the most pleasant of nights," he says.

Dick gives him a brittle half smile, which Jason does not know how to return. He has the absurd urge to take Dick's hand in his, to hold him, or be held by him. They have moments like this, at times, when they seem on the brink of closeness. Jason has wanted, in the past, to close that gap. (He already trusts Dick with his life; it is bizarre that there could still be a gap to close, but there is.)

Jason cannot bring himself to move, but Dick seems to sense what he wants. He fumbles for Jason's hand, grasps it. His fingers are like icicles. He brings Jason's hand to his chest, clasps it there, over his strong heartbeat. It is a shockingly intimate gesture, and Jason is stunned.

"Isn't it funny," he finds himself blabbering, out of nerves, "that we both met Bruce when we were doing something we weren't supposed to be doing?"

Dick blinks at him.

"I was jacking tyres, and you were escaping juvie." Bruce had told him that, once, when he was delirious from injuries and doing that thing where he talked about Dick without realising it. Their relationship had been baffling to Jason, because whenever Dick came over Bruce made it a point to be a jackass to him. "And the guy just thought – "

A movement catches the corner of his eye. " _Down_!" he yells, shoving Dick off the bed. The window shatters inward, and Dick lands hard on the floor, grunting and clutching his shoulder. Blood seeps through his fingers.

Jason dives after him and scrabbles for his Sig P226 on the beside table, turning off the safety. He gets to his knees and surveys the area, only to duck when bullets rain down into the room again, missing him by centimetres. He'd caught sight of a dark figure crouched on a rooftop about thirty yards off, armed with what seemed to be an assault rifle.

As soon as the shooting stops, Jason hauls himself up and fires several bullets without hesitation. At this point he doesn't care if he kills this fucker; they shot first, and he's sick of being attacked in safehouses. One bullet catches the person's side, and they jerk and tumble back behind the balustrade.

Cursing, he turns to Dick, who has struggled up, face twisted in pain.

They have to haul ass. 


End file.
